Clinton-Era Cable To Iran Highlights Tehran’s Role In Killing Americans

Three years after 19 Americans died in a bombing at a Saudi Arabian apartment complex, then-President Bill Clinton sent a cable that told Iran’s president a secret that the 42nd president wasn’t even willing to tell the American public: U.S. intelligence had ample evidence that Tehran was behind the deadly Khobar Towers terror attack.

“Message to President Khatami from President Clinton: The United States Government has received credible evidence that members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, (IRGC) along with members of Lebanese and Saudi Hizballah, were directly involved in the planning and execution of the terrorist bombing in Saudi Arabia of the Khobar Towers military resident complex,” the 1999 cable declared.

“The United States views this in the gravest terms,” the cable continued. “We acknowledge that the bombing occurred prior to your election. Those responsible, however, have yet to face justice for this crime. And the IRGC may be involved in planning for further terrorist attacks against American citizens. The involvement of the IRGC in terrorist activity and planning abroad remains a cause of deep concern to us.”

You can read that memo here:

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BillClintonCabletoIran1999KhobarPlusResponse.pdf
Chronic terrorism and two realities
The communiqué, released decades later under the Freedom of Information Act, is a stark reminder of two realities that President Trump must review as he decides in the next few days whether to commit U.S. military action to Israel’s war on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The first is that Iran’s theocratic government has waged a chronic terrorist war against the United States since first taking hostages at the U.S. embassy in Tehran during the 1979 revolution. They have claimed nearly 1,000 American lives when Iranian-backed IEDs that killed troops in Iraq and Syria are counted alongside terror attacks at a Marine barracks and U.S. embassies in Lebanon, Khobar Towers and elsewhere.

Some attacks were thwarted, like a restaurant bombing in 2011 in Washington, D.C. targeting the Saudi ambassador to the United States, the kidnapping of an American-Iranian journalist and an assassination attempt against Trump last year that would have only added to the toll.

“When we hear that Iran is threatening, well, we’re going to retaliate if you do something to us, we are already at war with Iran,” former National Security Council chief of staff Fred Fleitz told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Wednesday. “Iran is already committing acts of terrorism, and did a major one as recently as 2024 when an Iranian agent was indicted but got away for trying to kill Trump before the 2024 election.”